The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 4.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

[234] And there, on breezy morns, they saw
     The fishing-schooners outward run,
Their low-bent sails in tack and flaw
     Turned white or dark to shade and sun.
Sometimes, in calms of closing day,
     They watched the spectral mirage play,
Saw low, far islands looming tall and nigh,
     And ships, with upturned keels, sail like a sea the sky.

Sometimes a cloud, with thunder black,
     Stooped low upon the darkening main,
Piercing the waves along its track
     With the slant javelins of rain.
And when west-wind and sunshine warm
     Chased out to sea its wrecks of storm,
They saw the prismy hues in thin spray showers
     Where the green buds of waves burst into white froth flowers.

And when along the line of shore
     The mists crept upward chill and damp,
Stretched, careless, on their sandy floor
     Beneath the flaring lantern lamp,
They talked of all things old and new,
     Read, slept, and dreamed as idlers do;
And in the unquestioned freedom of the tent,
     Body and o'er-taxed mind to healthful ease unbent.

Once, when the sunset splendors died,
     And, trampling up the sloping sand,
In lines outreaching far and wide,
     The white-maned billows swept to land,